I recently purchased Charlotte Zeepvat's Queen Victoria's Family: A Century of Photographs and I must say how pleased I was with this book. It is a collection of hundreds of photographs of Queen Victoria's descendants from 1840 to 1940. I purchased it because I thought it would be interesting to see all of the Queen's children and their individual families, but I was surprised at how many rare photographs there were of the Hesse children that I had seen nowhere else. I can certainly highly recommend this book for both those who are interested in royalty in general (as you can see the connections between QV's descendants and put faces to the names) and also to those interested in Alexandra's family. Here is a list of 15 pictures showing Alix's family that I thought would be of particular interest to people on this board (unfortunately, I don't have a scanner for those who may be interested in seeing any of these pictures):
1- Pg. 34: Group shot at Osborne at the time of Princess Beatrice's wedding in July 1885, showing all the Hesse children, including a 13 year old Alix.
2- Pg. 41: Queen Victoria with the Wales princes plus Victoria (age 8) and Ella (age 7) of Hesse in 1871.
3- Pg. 47: Large family group shot taken in Darmstadt in 1882, showing the Hesses (including a 10 year old Alix with the Princess of Wales' arm around her), the Wales, and the Schleswig-Holstein's.
4- Pg. 56: Queen Victoria at Balmoral with Princess Elisabeth of Hesse (Ernie's daughter, age 4) and others in 1899.
5- Pg. 60: Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna in a stroller with her nurse in 1897 (I had never seen this picture of little Olga before).
6- Pg. 69: Princess Elisabeth of Hesse at 1 year old in 1896.
7- Pg. 71: The Hesse and Wales children in 1875, including a 3 year old Alix.
8- Pg. 74: Victoria (age 5) and Ella (age 4) of Hesse in 1868, dressed as Hessian peasants.
9- Pg. 94: Victoria (age 12), Ella (age 11), and Irene (age 9) of Hesse in 1875.
10- Pg. 127: Clear picture of Frittie, Alix's little brother who died of hemophilia, shown a few weeks before his death in 1873 (one of the few rare pictures of the child).
11- Pg. 134: Princess Elisabeth of Hesse (age 6) in 1901.
12- Pg. 149: Ernie's family in 1916, with part of the Neues Palais in the background (interesting because of the palace shot).
13- Pg. 181: Victoria (age 68) and Ernie (age 63) at the wedding of Ernie's son Georg Donatus in 1931.
14- Pg. 182: Ernie (age 64) holding his first grandchild in 1932.
15- Pg. 202: Victoria (age 69) of Hesse in 1932 and Irene of Hesse in the 1930's.
